


Trace One Mark (The Scars Within Remix)

by bocje_ce_ustu



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Remix, Underage Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-26 02:49:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12049743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bocje_ce_ustu/pseuds/bocje_ce_ustu
Summary: Charles wanted to bear the mark of Erik's teeth on his skin.It hadn't occurred to him that that might mean something else entirely to Erik.





	Trace One Mark (The Scars Within Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [significantowl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/significantowl/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Trace One Mark](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4886116) by [significantowl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/significantowl/pseuds/significantowl). 



> The original fic is so sweet and sexy, if you haven’t read it yet you should definitely check it out! And I, being the terrible person I am, had to go and make it sad.  
> This is set during XMFC, as my plot bunny led me there.  
> Mind the tags, guys!

It had kept nagging at him since he had noticed. That is, the fact that what was always there in every other occasion, in all of its raging glory, went noticeably missing when they were alone.

And it wasn’t that Charles didn’t have opportunities to enjoy them – the fine, regular twin rows of strong teeth, two crescents coming together in blinding splendour as Erik smiled – they were there, just not _there_ when Erik’s focus was entirely on him, eyes and skin and muscle that just didn’t seem to get enough of Charles under them.

Charles had his own private corner of his mind where he had begun fantasizing about just that – about Erik’s teeth scraping along his body, closing around one nipple and tugging just right, and then wet heat circling a patch of skin, a pang as it claimed him, tracing a mark for everyone to see – and as far fantasizing went, it was splendid.

But the thrill of anticipation, to know that it would actually happen, was a pleasure in its own right that Charles had yet to feel.

Maybe, he had thought, showing how it could be – how the unabashed pressure of teeth met flushed skin – would make Erik realize that there were yet so many paths open to them to explore.

That, at least, had been the idea.

An idea that had been abruptly discarded as soon as Charles’s teeth had sunk in the soft dip where Erik’s neck met shoulder, Erik had gone carefully still under him, and then the past had exploded.

He wasn’t even aware that he had jerked away, at first, parting at the violence of the shock.

“Erik— I’m so sorry... I didn’t know.”

“I thought you knew everything about me.”

“I thought—” _I’d better stay out of your head_ , he thought, but didn’t say. They’d been knowing each other for so little time, and hurt each other already so much, in so many little ways. His voice dropped a notch, turned into a rueful murmur. “I was showing off.” He couldn’t look at Erik, though he knew that he must, because what Erik was thinking was exactly how Charles wouldn’t even want to look at him, now that he knew.

And then Erik had started talking.

“The numbers weren’t enough.” His voice, rough at the edges, grew thick with spite. “He liked leaving marks that were his. Something I would see when I looked in the mirror. Something the others would see. So I would always remember whom I belonged to.”

He huffed, shook his head a little dazedly, as he was trying, Charles knew, to put to words a reason, something somehow making sense of all of that, anything that would make Charles understand that, if he could have, he would have not have weathered it.

“He promised me… He promised me I would have news of my father, if I… cooperated. I… really, I was a fool, hoping for such a thing, but I was alone and…”

Charles wanted to touch his arm, take his hand, anything, but Erik was all nervous energy, a spring poised to uncoil, and he knew that when that happened it would overwhelm them both.

“I don’t think he liked the act itself… as much as the power it gave him over me. He liked how it made me angry and scared like little else. He treated it like any experiment… I was tied down to a slab either way.”

He knew his face had broken when Erik’s finally did.

“Don’t. I couldn’t stand you pitying me.”

“I’m not pitying you. I’m… furious.” He was aware of the irony of him telling Erik that. Still, that was the truth. “We won’t let him hurt anyone else.”

His mind went to Darwin, his kind eyes and open smile the last thing he remembered about him. His mind still refused to believe the image of millions of flickers of ember and dust dissolving into the air under Raven’s bewildered gaze. It went to Angel, lured away by golden promises. He couldn’t help but wonder, something sick coiling at the bottom of his stomach, how Shaw would deliver.

“It’s a promise.” Erik set his eyes on him in that focused gaze that never failed to have Charles on edge. And even as Charles knew the promise in Erik’s eyes was not the one he’d offered, in the blazing flame scorching his belly he realised that, if Shaw had been in front of him right there and then, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t shut his mind, erasing his conscience on the spot. In that moment, a wild part of him might even have enjoyed it, the crush of a twisted mind. The rush of exhilaration that tasted like retribution. It would be like pulling a plug. Better even, like slamming down the lever of a generator, drowning the whole house into darkness. Except that the chaos raging on the inside of those walls would then only be covered in shadow. Everything would stay just the same.

Erik turned his eyes back to their limbs, still loosely intertwined in between the sheets. Traces of warmth lingered in the cautious stillness that had followed the revelation, but the heated cries of their bodies had gone quiet.

“I ruined it, haven’t I.”

It hurt that, with everything laid out between them, every invisible wound still bleeding within, Erik would worry about that.

Charles shifted awkwardly on the mattress. He reached out for a sliver of sheet to cover himself with, then decided against it.

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true.”

Darkness hung thick between them.

“I’ve been wondering for a while,” Charles said. “I thought maybe that was just a thing you didn’t do. Something you didn’t like, or weren’t used to.” His lips curved into a wry smile. “I should have known.”

“You could have,” Erik said, his voice soft. His fingers found Charles’s on the bed and wrapped around the index and middle. “But you didn’t. And I’m thankful for that.” He sighed, a hitched, raw sound escaping his lips. “I’ve been wondering too.”

The sentence, carefully worded to mimic his own, was like a cold drop of water rolling down Charles’s spine. He shrugged off the sensation, focusing instead on the warm points of contact between their fingers as Erik chose his next words. Charles didn’t know what they would be, but he knew where they would lead. He waited for them as one waits for two cars going too fast to collide, with a fatal sense of dread and hopelessness.

“I’ve been wondering why there’s a library here that seems made for you, and I never see you there, with your nose in some book. How come this is where you spent your childhood and you never even mentioned it in passing before we needed a place to lay low and regroup.”

Charles briefly wondered how they had got here. A secret for a secret, he guessed. A scar for a scar. He recognised Erik’s genuine attempt to understand, but what he felt, lying underneath, was the raw need to bite back. Erik was already bleeding, and he would not go down without striking a blow of his own.

“You do know now. You upset her.” He had _casually_ run into Raven in a hallway afterwards, her agitation clear in the lines of her face and body as it had been in her mind. She had looked at him with a mix of confusion, guilt and rightful annoyance, before sticking out her chin defiantly.

“I wish you’d told me.”

“Certain scars,” said Charles, carefully “you just have to let fade away.”

Erik was silent for a moment, not for lack of words. Charles could heard them just as well, as they hung heavy and too loud for pillow talk.

When the words did come, they sounded deflated.

“How can you do that? Charles, they hurt you. They were your family and they hurt you.”

“They didn’t feel like they were.” His voice was a whisper, and he felt again as helpless as when he would let his back slide along shelves of dusty spines, trying to make himself as small as he could, only to find time and again that his ragged breath had betrayed him. “You know what hurt me the most? Not my stepfather’s belt, or the way Cain’s knee always seemed to find my stomach with mathematical precision, but the way my mother looked at me over the bottle, her eyes glazed.” His voice almost failed him. His grip on Erik’s hand tightened in a way that had to hurt. Erik held on just as tightly. “I could never decide if she thought me a disappointment or she simply couldn’t be bothered to recognize me. I knew she knew, and she knew that I knew, and never said or done anything about it.”

“Yet you would let me,” Erik said after a while.

A beat, and reality realigned around them.

Charles became aware of the crack in the seemingly carefully erected walls of his conscience, of the desire that had sunk in with his teeth; before that, even, in every touch Erik had responded to with painstaking tenderness.

It took a while to find the words.

“It’s not like that with you. For me… It’s different, when you want it to be there.”

Except it wasn’t. For Erik, anyway, and that was all that mattered.

“You can’t ask me that. I couldn’t do that to you,” Erik said. Because that meant a total surrender, a mark of ownership Erik wouldn’t allow.

“I know.” He forced himself to wipe the frustration off his face. His smile felt as feeble on his lips as Erik’s looked.

Charles took Erik’s hand and dragged him back down with him, guiding Erik’s arm around his body.

It didn’t help that he knew who he belonged to, by now.

 

 


End file.
